Patent Awarded to ECE Assistant Professor Shrivastava
ECE Assistant Professor Aatmesh Shrivastava has been awarded a patent for “Low Input Voltage Boost Converter with Peak Inductor Current Control and Offset Compensated Zero Detection.”
Abstract Source: USPTO
The low input voltage boost converter with peak inductor current control and offset compensated zero detection provide a boost converter scheme to harvest energy from sources with small output voltages. Some embodiments described herein includes a thermoelectric boost convert that combines an IPEAK control scheme with offset compensation and duty cycled comparators to enable energy harvesting from TEG inputs as low as 5 mV to 10 mV, and the peak inductor current is independent to first order of the input voltage and output voltage. A control circuit can be configured to sample the input voltage (VIN) and then generate a pulse with a duration inversely proportional to VIN so as to control the boost converter switches such that a substantially constant peak inductor current is generated.
